Pinoy Eco Farmer

“Hands of a Filipino Farmer” by Paolo Zalameda

Statistics say that 70 percent of the poor in our country are in the rural areas, where agriculture and fisheries are the main sources of livelihood. But this is not because crops, livestock and fisheries are products that are inherently unprofitable. The rich in the countryside also mostly derive their immense wealth from these same products, but they are mainly the “middlemen,” composed of traders and processors. Indeed, one observes this inequity in farming areas throughout the country, where the most expensive houses belong to these people, often in stark contrast to the farmers’ and fishers’ humble abodes dotting the countryside. The situation suggests that the primary producers of farm and fishery products are not getting their due share of the final value of their products paid by consumers. Instead, it is the middlemen who manage to obtain a disproportionately larger slice of the value for themselves.

Interestingly, there is clear indication that Filipino farmers are worse off relative to their counterparts in other Asian countries. One gets some proof of this from cross-country data on farm-gate and wholesale prices, readily available from the database of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. In rice, for example, the ratio of farm-gate price to wholesale price in the Philippines has been averaging 47 percent over the past 15 years. That is, Filipino rice farmers ultimately receive less than half of the value of their product paid at wholesale. The same ratio for Thailand is 63 percent, while India has 62 percent and China, 94 percent. In short, Thai, Indian and Chinese farmers are able to obtain a far greater share of the final price of their products than Filipino farmers are able to get. Only Bangladesh and Indonesia have ratios similar to ours, suggesting that these countries have the same market inefficiencies that end up squeezing the incomes of their farmers.

Why do Filipino farmers obtain such low prices for the product of their hard work?

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a lush ricefield

What does it take to convert a rice field cultivated the conventional way into an organic farm? One technique is to follow the system of Pastor Jerry Dionson of Humayan Ministry in Bago City, Negros Occidental. He has been helping the farmers in this rice bowl of Negros in converting conventionally farmed fields into organic farms.

Dionson and his farming colleagues have good reasons for converting rice fields into organic farms. For one, it is economical to produce rice the organic way since the farmers themselves are taught to make their own fertilizers and plant protection inputs. Usually, an organic farmer can grow organic rice at a cash expense of only about P14,700 per hectare. For another reason, the price of organic rice is much higher than the conventionally produced grains. The selling price is P60 to P80 per kilo.

As per the experience at the Humayan Ministry, the yield increases as the years pass by. In 2005, when they started converting their farms, the yield was only 75 cavans of palay per hectare. This increased to 87 cavans in 2006, 93 cavans in 2007, 115 cavans in 2008 and then 128 cavans in 2009.

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The pili (Canarium ovatum) tree is the source of the pili nut which is made into delicacies that are the pride of the Bicol Region. What most people don’t know is that the bark of the pili yields a valuable resin – known as “Manila elemi” – which is used in the paint, pharmaceuticals, printing and perfume industries.

However, despite the fact that 225,000 pili trees grow in the Bicol provinces, there exists virtually no resin harvesting enterprises in most parts of the region.

To help start a sustainable industry, the Department of Science and Technology-Forest Products Research and Development Institute (DOST-FPRDI) started three years ago teaching pili growers and farmers the scientific way of resin gathering. “The resin must be tapped the right way to make sure that the pili trees are not harmed and their yields are sustained. Over-tapping, deep tapping and frequent re-chipping can damage and eventually kill the trees,” explains FPRDI’s forester Arsenio B. Ella.

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